Archive By Author - Dale Hogg

It was a double play at the Great Bend City Council meeting Monday night as the council authorized Mayor Mike Allison to sign lease agreements with both the professional Great Bend Boom and the collegiate Great Bend Bat Cats organizers for their 2017 summer seasons.

Every day in Kansas children are traveling in vehicles, riding to and from school or sports practice, the grocery store, or heading to a friend's house. The problem is, too many children aren't riding safely. To help families and caregivers know what to do to keep their children as safe as possible on the road, statewide partners including Safe Kids Kansas, the Kansas Department of Transportation, and the Kansas Highway Patrol are promoting Child Passenger Safety Week.

The 2016-2017 flu season is rapidly approaching and the Barton County Health Department is prepared. The office will have the vaccines available starting Monday and will hold outreach clinics countywide.

The Kansas State Fair has started its annual 10-day at the Kansas State Fairgrounds in Hutchinson. This is the largest single event in the state, and annually attracts approximately 335,000 people from all 105 Kansas counties and several and beyond.

Construction on the much-anticipated Cheyenne Bottoms scenic overlook east of Hoisington on K-4 could begin in November, the Barton County Commission learned Monday morning. This news came after commissioners approved a revised memorandum of understanding with the Kansas Division of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism which is splitting the cost of the project with the county.

Barton County commissioners Monday morning knew the ornate north and south fences at Golden Belt Memorial Park had to be restored. They were just frustrated that the restoration had to come only a few years after the wrought-iron fencing had been installed.

In 2014, an unidentified man walked into a fire station in Washington State and turned over a plastic bag containing an American flag. He claimed it was the same flag raised by firefighters over the smoking rubble of the World Trade Center following the horrific terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

When the Barton County Treasurer's Office first filed on properties with delinquent taxes in March, there were 129. Now, with the county's annual tax sale looming, there are only 64 parcels on the list, Treasurer Kevin Wondra said.

It was a two-for-one deal for the city last week when the Great Bend Police Department served a search warrant for drugs on a residence in the 400 block of Walnut. Police Chief Cliff Couch said officers discovered the house was hooked up to numerous illegal utilities, and was also in violation of numerous codes and sanitarian-type issues. The house was ultimately red-tagged by the for code violations.